Monthly Archives: November 2019

November 4, 2019

All I’ve Been Given

All I’ve been given
and insist that I’ve lost
is somewhere,
not in my pocket or closet
but I have it all, I’m sure.

It’s a process of
elimination — none of it
is anywhere I’d expect it to be,
nowhere obvious or easy to access,
so it must be in the dirty recesses

of a chamber or box
I don’t like to acknowledge.
Even the shiny things,
things I should be proud to have
and display, are down there,

inside that, hidden
from me and all others;
whatever I am is in there
for good or bad, and here I am
unwilling to dig and dirty my nails

for everyone to see
how much work it is
to tell all my truth.
I protect us all by failing
myself, or so I like to claim.

Leave a comment | tags: meditations, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

November 3, 2019

A small, angry wound: short slit
on the side of my left thumb
from a clumsy test of the new edge
of an old Swiss Army knife.
It didn’t bleed at all
but somehow still hurts:
no more damage
than a paper cut
but it’s hot and bothered
and more than bothersome.
The type of injury
you leave alone
and pretend it will heal
in short order

even though nothing on me
heals in short order anymore;
I ought to have known
this was going to happen,
having long been aware
of how fragile the sugars
in my blood have rendered me
in late middle age. Knee
that will not stabilize;
hands that cannot grip
or sense; feet which imagine
against all other evidence
that they are always on fire,
and eyes that are beginning
to dim and twitch
from dawn to dark.

I wish there was more of value
to say here: a deep lesson about mortality
or endurance, a metaphor for
the state of the world, an insight
to lay my fears to rest;
all I’ve got is an inflamed thumb
and a list of chronic infractions against
my romantic fantasy
of having ever been
truly healthy and intact,
and I’m tired of looking at them.

Instead, I figure out a way
to type around them. I figure out a way
to walk while burning. I figure out
how the way things feel to me now
when I touch them with these new hands,
and I try to decide how I’ll manage
when I find myself, at some point,
in terminal dark.

Leave a comment | tags: aging, meditations, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

November 1, 2019

Waiting For It To Finish

By Tony Brown

Sitting quietly
in my usual spot
waiting for coffee
to finish brewing.

This is today,
just like yesterday.

I’m soft, I guess.
Soft and broken
though broken and soft
don’t feel compatible.
Torn, then. Soft and
shredded, all tore up.

I’m waiting
for coffee to finish.

It’s just like yesterday
today. Right down
to darkness, wind, rain,
what you might call
desperation, what I call

today. Today is
hard and broken.
I’m soft and perforated.
It’s like yesterday,
coffee taking forever
to finish
brewing.

I’m sitting in the usual spot
longing for it to finish.
Soft and broken in a soft way,
longing for a finish.
I wait for the finish but I’m not going
until I have my coffee. Today
is just like yesterday: broken.
Waiting softly torn for a finish.
It makes itself
known from the next room —